The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, The Most Devastating Plague of All Time

Paperback | January 31, 2006

La moria grandissima began its terrible journey across the European and Asian continents in 1347, leaving unimaginable devastation in its wake. Five years later, twenty-five million people were dead, felled by the scourge that would come to be called the Black Death. The Great Mortality is the extraordinary epic account of the worst natural disaster in European history -- a drama of courage, cowardice, misery, madness, and sacrifice that brilliantly illuminates humankind's darkest days when an old world ended and a new world was born.

La moria grandissima began its terrible journey across the European and Asian continents in 1347, leaving unimaginable devastation in its wake. Five years later, twenty-five million people were dead, felled by the scourge that would come to be called the Black Death. The Great Mortality is the extraordinary epic account of the worst na...

John Kelly, who holds a graduate degree in European history, is the author and coauthor of ten books on science, medicine, and human behavior, includingThree on the Edge, whichPublishers Weeklycalled the work of "an expert storyteller." He lives in New York City.

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Reviews

Rated 4 out of
5 by
Anonymous from
"and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat onThis book is very well-written and throroughly researched, but it the language is a little too modern and colloquial. He insists on references to nuclear war and other twenty-first century metaphors that rip you out of the fourteenth century tale he is trying to weave. Kelly narrates the story of the Black Death more through examples of plague victims and survivors than through overarching historical description. This is what makes it such an emotional book: you read excerpts from the plague chronicle of Venice or Paris, and then the chronicler succumbs to the plague and the leaves the account unfinished. The book is especially good in the chapters on the plague in Britain, but this is due to the fact that the British had more time to prepare for the onset of the plague and kept better records.

Date published: 2006-06-21

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Editorial Reviews

“Rich and evocative…written in the tradition of Barbara Tuchman, I couldn’t stop reading this work of brilliance and wisdom.”